Blizzard Quietly Nerfs McCree and Buffs Ana on Overwatch PC

Today, Blizzard pushed a new patch to the PC version of Overwatch that undid part of the buff that McCree received in last week’s patch, and also buffed up the game’s newest sniper mom, Ana. The patch appeared without any advance notice, devoid of the phase of testing on the game’s public test servers that the previous patch had.

Here are the full notes for the patch:

“Ana:

Biotic Rifle

Rate of fire increased by 20%
Magazine size increased from 8 to 10

Developer Comments: While Ana has been very well received, she was showing to be a little bit weaker overall. In addition to helping her feel better to play, these changes should also increase her healing and damage output.

McCree:

Peacemaker

Primary Fire:
Damage falloff range decreased by 10 meters
Damage falloff amount is unchanged
As a result, even with this change, McCree’s effective range is still higher than it was at launch

Alternate Fire:
Rate of fire increased by 15%
Flashbang
Recovery time (i.e. the amount of time before McCree can fire again) decreased from 0.5 seconds to 0.35 seconds

Developer Comments: McCree’s latest range increase helped him quite a bit, but it was a bit too much in the right hands. This change weakens his long range damage somewhat, but still keeps it stronger than it has been in the recent past. The other changes combine to allow him to land more alternate fire shots on targets that he has hit with Flashbang.

BUG FIXES

Heroes

Targets of Ana’s Sleep Dart will no longer instantly recover when damaged (recovery time is now 0.5 seconds)

User Interface

Fixed UI compatibility issues for ATI cards

Fixed a bug that would sometimes cause Lúcio, Mei, and other models to only partially render (or disappear)”

In the case of McCree, his changes essentially mean that his damage is still much higher at longer ranges than before last week’s patch, but they’ve slightly decreased that range to make him less of a sniper. Ana’s change makes a lot of sense, as a higher fire rate means that she can heal allies much faster with her healing, and possibly make her a more effective killer, in the right hands.

Blizzard gave no word about when (or if) this patch will be coming to the console versions of Overwatch, but it’s safe to assume so if the changes receive good feedback.